"Exaggerate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you exaggerate. If you were to count it up, I am sure you would find that we talk an hour at least, altogether. And then, although I am very young and inexperienced, I can imagine how many conquests you have ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he works to open the mind of the other man by first establishing a unity of human feeling between his own heart and the heart of his prospect. He uses the emotive tone. He "talks like a brother." Of course he is careful not to exaggerate this show of fellow feeling. He uses a "hearty" tone without appearing in the least degree hypocritical. When their hearts are in accord, the other man is prepared to agree mentally ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... magicians; and these stars are thrown at these devils; not for the birth or death of any person. Then the things which the magicians tell, having heard from the devils, are true, but these magicians tell lies, and exaggerate in what ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... you exaggerate your duty at times, then, lieutenant. Now, boys, what have you to say? This is only an informal questioning and you are under no obligations to answer. I think, however, that there has been nothing more here than the stirring up of a mare's ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... back thoughtfully to his place, because it looked as if Daly had been there and the other had helped him to steal away. If this surmise was correct, they might be trying to follow Featherstone; but he was, fortunately, out of their reach, and Foster decided that he must not exaggerate the importance of the matter. After all, Daly might have come to Montreal on business, and the rotunda of a Canadian hotel is something of a public resort. Still, he felt disturbed and presently gave the clerk the fur coat, telling him to deliver it when asked for. He felt ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... begged, her voice a very caress of suppliant softness,—"tell me what vexes you and sets a curb upon your tongue. You exaggerate, I am assured. You could ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... except as he does actively and devotedly belong to that kingdom. The individual would hardly be in God's eyes worth the saving, except in order that he might be the instrumentality of the realisation of the kingdom. Those are ideas which it is possible to exaggerate in statement or, at least, to set forth in all the isolation of their quality as half-truths. But it is hardly possible to exaggerate their significance as a reversal of the immemorial one-sidedness, inadequacy, ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... "Don't, please, exaggerate, Kitty! There is no question of ruin. I shall make my way when the time comes, and Lady Parham will have ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "You exaggerate my fears. I have not resigned the hope that Lilian will survive the struggle through which she is passing, but it will be cruel to deceive you—my hope is weaker than ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in catching delicate shades of feeling, and the latter did not escape Madame de Palme. She became vaguely conscious of a slightly favorable change in my opinion of her, and it was not long before she even began to exaggerate its extent and to attempt abusing it. For two days she pursued me with her keenest shafts, which I bore good-naturedly, and to which I even responded with some little attentions, for I had still at heart the rude expressions of my dialogue with Madame de Malouet, and ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. "But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid," she said. "Her position in the world is ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... possible to exaggerate the importance of this lesson? 2. When will the pupil appreciate its practical value? 3. Where is this key given? 4. Are numbers hard to remember? 5. How do we make them hard to forget? 6. By what are the figures represented? 7. What letters have no numerical value assigned to them? 8. What ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... writer did not exaggerate the picture, for his description is too abundantly confirmed in every page of the Celtic Annalists, with only but a single difference. To the Englishman the perpetual disturbance appeared a dishonour and disgrace; to the Celt it was the normal and natural ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... widow's gayish conduct after her husband's death, declared it to be natural enough. It had been shown to be innocent. He trounced the Press for helping to exaggerate the rumours which envy of Mme Lacoste's good fortune had created. He asked the jury ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... horsemen and others in search of water. Amongst our occasional visitors was a well-known gentleman, bearing the proud title of "The biggest liar in Australia." How far he deserved the distinction I should hesitate to say, for men prone to exaggerate are not uncommon in the bush. Sometimes, however, they must have the melancholy satisfaction of knowing that they are disbelieved, when they really do happen to tell the truth. A story of my friend's, which was received with incredulous laughter, ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... Antwerp, 1558); into German (Wahrhaftiger Bericht von ... Ethiopien, Eisieben, 1566); into English (Sam. Purchas, Pilgrimes, part ii., London, 1625). The information it contains must, however, be received with caution, as the author is prone to exaggerate, and does not confine himself to what came within ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... means; if some did not exaggerate none of us would get a hearing—especially if we happened to be in a minority; and reformers ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... man who stood his ground was a truly sinister being. He was tall, thin and angular; his clothing was scant and ragged, his face bronzed with exposure to the sun. A thin moustache of straggling hairs served rather to exaggerate than to conceal the vicious expression of a hare-lipped mouth. He stood with his elbow in the palm of one hand and his chin in the other, while around his legs a pack of wolf-like dogs crawled and growled as the traveler drew near. Throwing himself lightly ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... which nothing but the spasm of verse will relieve. Each youth imagines that spring-tide and love are wonders which he is the first of human beings to appreciate, and he burns to alleviate his emotion in rhyme. Historians exaggerate, perhaps, the function of music in awakening and guiding the exercise of lyrical poetry. The lyric exists, they tell us, as an accompaniment to the lyre; and without the mechanical harmony the spoken song is an artifice. Quite as plausibly ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... Sumner, "concerns directly some twenty thousand colored persons, whom it will lift to the adamantine platform of equal rights. If it were regarded simply in its bearings on the District it would be difficult to exaggerate its value; but when it is regarded as an example to the whole country under the sanction of Congress, its value is infinite. It is in the latter character that it becomes a pillar of fire to illumine the footsteps of millions. What we do here will be done ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... to exaggerate, I do not wish to urge upon you one-sided views of your character or conduct. I give all credit to many excellences, many acts of sacrifice, many acts of service; and yet I say that the main reason why any of us have a good opinion of ourselves is because ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... campaign of 1709, and his having there defended himself with his half-pike for nearly ten minutes before any support reached him. To do the Baron justice, although sufficiently prone to dwell upon, and even to exaggerate, his family dignity and consequence, he was too much a man of real courage ever to allude to such personal acts of merit as he ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... men but their brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or power that this term didn't seem to cover. In many a girl so great a kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered her sister with: "No, I wasn't in love with him, but somehow, since you're so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses me." It is doubtless ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... but, to their surprise, the subordinate received their attentions with great coldness. Having entered her protest against what was going on, and having resisted the contagion of example, it was natural she should somewhat exaggerate her prudery, for it is hard to hit just the right point in such reaction. The result was, she made herself so disagreeable to Miss Sparks that the latter determined on getting rid of her as ...
— Jacqueline, v3 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... me to correct your misapprehensions by informing you that most of them have returned to their respective commands, their search for their late "masters" having proved bootless; and I think I do not exaggerate in assuring you that there is not a colored soldier here who does not prefer the fate of his comrades at Fort Pillow to being returned to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... exaggerate when he praised him, then," said Pepe. "I am very sorry that I talked all that nonsense I did about lawyers. I was very perverse, was ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... get excited," interrupted Mr. Maynard, bracing up. "I'm sure you exaggerate. Tell ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... one or two other points I mean to touch upon, and let me just name them. Do not let us so exaggerate that thought of the substantial sameness of the future and the past as to flatten life and make it dreary and profitless and insignificant. Let us rather feel, as I shall have to say presently, that whilst ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... We must not exaggerate this element. For one thing the power represented by the great Capitalist Press was a power equal with that of the great advertisers. For another, there was no clear-cut distinction between the Capitalism that owned newspapers and the Capitalism that advertised. ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... rather upon his career, and usually, I am glad to recall, with a note of satisfaction and approval. In his delirious phases he would most often exaggerate this self-satisfaction, and talk of his splendours. He would pluck at the sheet and stare before him, and whisper ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos also, is ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... is hardly possible to exaggerate the waste of time, money, and trouble that has been caused by his not having been content to appear as descending with modification like other people from those who went before him. It will take years to get the ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... philanthropic motive injured the books from the artistic point of view is another question. It undoubtedly injured them exactly in proportion as the philanthropic motive led the writers to distort or to exaggerate the truth. It is perfectly justifiable, artistically, to lay the scene of a novel in a workhouse or a gaol, but if the humanitarian impulse leads to any embroidery of or divergence from the truth, the novel is artistically injured, because the selection and grouping of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... To exaggerate his own importance, Pickle gave here a glowing account of the Prince's prospects. These were really of the most gloomy character. A letter forwarded by Dormer (March 18) had proved that he was tracked down in Liege by the English Government. He tried Lorraine, but found ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... possibilities, of chances which were worth taking, of risks it was unwise to run. He appreciated his own power and influence to the very turn of a hair in the balance, and although to his companions he might exaggerate or underrate that influence to suit the occasion, he never made the fatal mistake of deceiving himself in the matter. Under ordinary circumstances, had his interest been aroused in a prisoner, he would have gone openly to those in authority and put the case before them, with every confidence ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... that in all the arts, except in acting and in dancing, woman's achievement has been infinitely less than man's. There have been a few great women poets—notably a Sappho, many good writers of fiction, and some capable painters. But to bring forward these particular women and to try either to exaggerate or belittle their importance can serve nothing. This search for ability among women is absurd. It already exists widely, though unused or directed into channels of waste. Of this I am convinced. The thing that ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... appreciate. They prefer the Requiem to Romeo. A Richard Strauss would be attracted by an almost insignificant work like the Ouverture du roi Lear; a Weingartner would single out for notice works like the Symphonic fantastique and Harold, and exaggerate their importance. But they do not feel what is intimate in him. Wagner said over the tomb of Weber, "England does you justice, France admires you, but only Germany loves you; you are of her own being, a glorious day of her life, a warm drop of her blood, a part of her ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... there, dropping bits of private, official information, which were immediately, caught up and telegraphed all over the country. But it need to surprise even the Colonel when he read it, it was embellished to that degree that he hardly recognized it, and the hint was not lost on him. He began to exaggerate his heretofore simple conversation to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be expected from the emotional East, exaggerate these views. Women are mostly "Sectaries of the god Wuensch"; beings of impulse, blown about by every gust of passion; stable only in instability; constant only in inconstancy. The false ascetic, the perfidious ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... may burst her barriers eastward as well as westward, toward the Pacific as well as toward the European Continent. In such a movement it would be impossible to exaggerate the momentous issues dependent upon a firm hold of the Sandwich Islands by a great, civilized, maritime power. By its nearness to the scene, and by the determined animosity to the Chinese movement which close contact seems to inspire, our own country, with its Pacific coast, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... and thereupon throws himself into a Rage, supposing the Excuse of Sickness and Weariness in them to be a purpos'd Contempt: Gloucester begs him to think of the fiery and unremoveable Quality of the Duke: and This, which was design'd to qualify his Passion, serves to exaggerate the Transports of it. ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... and American and New Zealand and South African and several other things, and she's been shipwrecked dozens of times," began Lennie Chapman, who was prone to exaggerate, ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... least understand, and adopt all the obscurities and paradoxes they stumble upon, as a cheap path to a reputation for profundity; who awkwardly imitate the manner and retail the phrases of the writers they study; and, as usual, exaggerate to caricature their least agreeable eccentricities. We should think that some of these more powerful minds must be by this time ashamed of that ragged regiment of shallow thinkers, and obscure writers and talkers who at present infest our ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... to exaggerate. I do not believe that he meant to leave me—even to be untrue to me. I could not speak to you of him if I thought him so black-hearted, so treacherous. I mean simply this—take the fact as I state it, and inquire no further; I ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Mrs Ray Jefferson had only heard of a sculptor and a musician, but she drifted into plurality by force of that irresistible tendency to exaggerate trifles which seems inherent in women who are given to scandal even ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... that also parish priests and archdeacons are more perfect than religious. For Chrysostom says in his Dialogue (De Sacerdot. vi): "Take for example a monk, such as Elias, if I may exaggerate somewhat, he is not to be compared with one who, cast among the people and compelled to carry the sins of many, remains firm and strong." A little further on he says: "If I were given the choice, where ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... and heaping together the offences, and most leud maners, the robberies, manslaughters, murthers, whoredomes, adulteries, incests, riots, extortions, and other prophane, and filthy actes, should affirme them to be common to all Germans, or otherwise to any other whole nation, and should exaggerate all these things with notorious lies, is he to be accounted one that spends his time in a good argument? But what maruaile is it, though a varlet, and, that I may giue him his true title, a filthy hogge, that imer (I say) hath bewrayed his nature and disposition in ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... cannot, and if I could I would not, tell you how to preach like Mr. Spurgeon, or the Bishop of ——. Your own character will form your style; your own zeal will direct it; your own obstinacy or ignorance may limit or exaggerate it; but my business is to prevent, as far as I can, your having any particular style; and to teach you the laws of all language, and the essential power ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... modicum of irritation. It is not only the labour of writing and the cost of stamps that anger you. Your innate modesty is outraged. How is it possible for you to say all those nice things about yourself which you know to be your due, and which a third person might even exaggerate? What business have editors to expose you to such inner conflict? A scholar I knew suffered agonies from this source. He was constantly making learned discoveries which nobody understood but himself, and so editors were always pestering ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... of Desdemona and Imogen. Besides, we do not want the reader to imagine that, before the war, the Belgians were ideally in love with one another. Like the English, the Americans and the French, we had our differences. It is one of the unavoidable drawbacks of Democracy that politics should exaggerate the importance of dissensions. Therefore it is all the more remarkable that the sudden friendship which sprang up between classes, parties and races in Belgium, on the eve of August 4th, should so long have defied the untiring efforts of the enemy and should remain as ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... usually happier married to a man of her own sort. You weren't born into the kind of life the Sewalls lead. You weren't born into even the kind of life you're leading now. Edith—Edith's fine, of course, and I've always been glad you two were so congenial—but she does exaggerate the importance of the social game. She plays it too hard. I don't want you to marry Sewall. I'm afraid you won't ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... of a settled income; doubtless also, on the occasion of visits exchanged between the two families, he would comment upon the unfortunate enterprises of his brother; and as the children of both brothers grew up, they would inherit and exaggerate, as children will, this settled difference between their respective parents. This, of course, may be entirely untrue, but I think it possible, and even likely; for Columbus in after life displayed a very tender regard for members of his ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... our enemies had been reinforced, though it was still too dark to count them with anything like accuracy. Indeed I don't, exaggerate when I say that our sight was not a little disturbed by the showers of arrows which they sent among us. In spite of their numbers, we rather astonished them with the warm reception provided for their entertainment. Old Short was in his element; calling ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... center all your suspicions on me. You exaggerate my importance, Mr. Glenarm. I’m only the man-of-all-work at a ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the blended motives of imperial expansion has been the desire for commercial profits; and this motive has played so prominent a part, especially in our own time, that we are apt to exaggerate its force, and to think of it as the sole motive. No doubt it has always been present in some degree in all imperial adventures. But until the nineteenth century it probably formed the predominant motive only ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... this subject it is that the sceptics triumph. All that stock of arguments they produce to depreciate our faculties and make mankind appear ignorant and low, are drawn principally from this head, namely, that we are under an invincible blindness as to the true and real nature of things. This they exaggerate, and love to enlarge on. We are miserably bantered, say they, by our senses, and amused only with the outside and show of things. The real essence, the internal qualities and constitution of every the meanest object, is hid from our view; something there is in every ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... very improbable to her, that any one would seek to gain her affections, unless with the view of enjoying the fortune which she had now the reputation of possessing; it was only natural that she should exaggerate those personal disadvantages, which had lost the heart of him whom she had once loved so truly. She had been so much attached to Hazlehurst, that she shrunk from the idea of ever becoming the wife of another; and she considered herself as having tacitly made choice of a single life, ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... foundation in truth. After they were once launched into the memories of men, the form of words, doubtless, tended to protect them to some extent from adulteration, and even when all allowance is made for man's well-known tendency to invent and exaggerate, it still remains likely that all the truth would be retained, although surrounded more or less with fiction. To distinguish the true from the false in such cases is not so difficult a process as one at first ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... to exaggerate the advantage which this must have given the Hebrews over the neighbouring nations, from a scientific point of view. The word of God gave them intellectual freedom, and so far as they were faithful to it, there was no hindrance ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... to appear seeking credit for a courage, or rather a coolness, which the reader may conceive I exaggerate, I may be pardoned if I pause to indulge in one or ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... in 1839, of the famous Runjeet Singh, when the sacred waters of the Ganges received the ashes of the greatest of the Sikhs, it is impossible for language to exaggerate the anarchy, the depravity, the misery of the Punjaub. Tigers, and wolves, and apes, have been the successors of the "Old Lion." The predominant spirit of that energetic and sagacious ruler bridled the licentious turbulence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... may once have been so beautiful, over-sensitiveness causes you to exaggerate your misfortune, but enough, tell me your story. Tell me about the loss ...
— A Successful Shadow - A Detective's Successful Quest • Harlan Page Halsey
... reported that their yield regularly increases as the stream is ascended. It is now proved that these districts are actually within from fifteen to twenty-three hours steam of Victoria, the principal town of the Vancouver's Island colony. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this fact. It is true that the same voyage which the steamer carrying the Governor of Vancouver's Island successfully performed, was attempted without success by another steamer about the ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne
... nation. At an early age, he travelled through the middle, southern and south-western states, engaged in selling papers and trash literature; and, for a time, he was employed by a showman to stand outside the tent and describe and exaggerate the attractions within. When he was in his fourteenth year, he accepted the offer of a permanent home; his chief object being, as he said, to obtain an education. "I have found," said he, "that a man cannot do much in this country unless he has some learning." This truth, simple, and resting ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... to think that the particular family in which we are interested is an "exceptional case," and the exceptional treatment lavished upon our exceptional case often rouses in a neighborhood hopes that it is impossible for us to fulfil. Then, too, occupied as we are with individuals, we are likely to exaggerate the importance of those causes of poverty that have their origin in the individual. We are likely to over emphasize the moral and mental lacks shown in bad personal habits, such as drunkenness and ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... enemies, and all the males from Serbia have been taken away—who can divine where? The Serbian bishops and priests, and all the leaders of the nation have been carried away too. There are neither leaders nor nation in the Serbian country. I don't exaggerate when I say that all the sufferings of poor and sorely stricken Belgium is still only a shadow of what Serbia sutlers in that dark corner of the world which is called the Balkans, far off from all friendly eyes, friendly ears and hearts. Yet I will ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... sprang out of mediaeval life, out of the mediaeval mind; and the mediaeval mind had for centuries been taught to abominate literature. I would not exaggerate or darken the 'Dark Ages' for you by throwing too much bitumen into the picture. I know that at the beginning there had been a school of Origen which advocated the study of Greek poetry and philosophy, as well as the school of Tertullian which condemned it. There is ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... money would do any good, and refused to take it, at any rate for the present. What could he do with it, if he did take it? 'I fear that he must lie upon his bed as he has made it,' said the doctor sorrowfully. 'It is a complaint which money cannot cure, but can always exaggerate. If, without costing myself or my family a shilling, I could put a thousand pounds into his hands to-morrow, I do not know whether I ought to ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... the time I have detained them."—"Ay, that I will with all my heart," quoth Sancho; "but what is become of the lions? Are they dead or alive?" Then the keeper very formally related the whole action, not failing to exaggerate, to the best of his skill, Don Quixote's courage; how at his sight alone the lion was so terrified, that he neither would nor durst quit his stronghold, though for that end his cage door was kept open for a considerable time; and how upon his remonstrating ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... unity was realized, as it was realized in England or in France at the same time, through the increasing power and centralizing action of modern princes. A few prejudiced writers have vainly endeavoured to exaggerate the racial or linguistic factor, and contended that, in the eyes of science, Belgian nationality could not exist. The duty of a scientist is not to distort the manifestations of natural phenomena in the light of some more or less popular idea. His duty is to explain facts. ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... more irrational or inopportune. It checked the reaction, which had commenced under the Consulate, in favour of creeds and the sentiment of religion. I have no desire to exaggerate the value of that reaction; I hold faith and true piety in too much respect to confound them with the superficial vicissitudes of human thought and opinion. Nevertheless the movement which led France back towards Christianity was more sincere and ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of even the approximate percentage of degenerate offspring resulting from marriages of consanguinity by direct inquiry is exceedingly difficult. The average human mind is so constituted as to exaggerate unconsciously the unusual in its experience. Herein lies the fallacy in the work of Dr. Bemiss. His material was "furnished exclusively by reputable physicians in various states," and of the 3942 children of consanguineous marriages in the cases ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... characters like Robert Moore, when he is dealing with anything except women, is the romance of industry in its first advance: a romance that has not remained. On such fighting frontiers people always exaggerate the strong qualities the masculine sex does possess, and always add a great many strong qualities that it does not possess. That is, briefly, all the reason in the Brontes on this special subject: the rest ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... on brass plates suspended to the arm. In 1891 he published his Experiments in Aerodynamics, which embodied the definite mathematical results obtained by years of careful research. It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of this work. The law which governs the reaction of the air on planes travelling at various speeds and various angles of incidence had been guessed at, or seen in glimpses, by earlier investigators; but here were ascertained numerical values offered to students and inventors. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the main range itself. We killed this day one of the largest kangaroos we had seen in any part of New South Wales, being from one hundred and fifty to one hundred and eighty pounds weight. These animals live in flocks like sheep; and I do not exaggerate, when I say that some hundreds were seen in the vicinity of this hill; it was consequently named Kangaroo Hill: several beautiful little rills of water have their source in it, but are soon lost in the immeasurable morass ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... occasioned by it. The riots between the Oxford townsmen and the clerks of the university on St. Scholastica's day, 1354, resulted in the victory of the former because of the recent diminution in the number of the scholars. Yet even as regards the monasteries, it is easy to exaggerate the effects of the plague. Five years after the Black Death, the Cistercians of the Lancashire abbey of Whalley boasted that they had added twenty monks to their convent, and were ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... The French nobles had been more faithful to them than the English to the Stuarts, for Cromwell had no luxurious court or rich appointments which he could hold out to those who would desert the royal cause. No words can exaggerate the self-abnegation of those men. I have seen a supper party under my father's roof where our guests were two fencing-masters, three professors of language, one ornamental gardener, and one translator of books, who held his hand in the front of his coat to conceal a rent in the ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who so attracted his attention was known on the show bills as "Little Miss Dimples, the Queen of the Sawdust Arena." Phil, as he gazed at her graceful little figure, agreed that the show bills did not exaggerate her charms at all. ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... earnestly, "this newspaper work gives you such a tendency to exaggerate. I never heard it said before that the family went that ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... on pottery were rather appropriated than invented by Greece. There is no occasion for disguising or underrating this indebtedness of Greece to her elder neighbors. But, on the other hand, it is important not to exaggerate the debt. Greek art is essentially self-originated, the product of a unique, incommunicable genius. As well might one say that Greek literature is of Asiatic origin, because, forsooth, the Greek alphabet came from Phenicia, as call Greek art the offspring of Egyptian ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... beginning of the Hanoverian Succession; and thence back to the quarrel between the King and the lawyers which had issue at Naseby; and thence again to the angry exit of Henry VIII. from the mediaeval council of Europe. It is easy to exaggerate the part played in the matter by that great and human, though very pagan person, Martin Luther. Henry VIII. was sincere in his hatred for the heresies of the German monk, for in speculative opinions Henry was ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... so studied as to succeed in protecting his own estate, in a measure, against even this great ally itself. After he became worth a million, it was observed that all his opinions grew less favorable to mankind in general, and that he was much disposed to exaggerate the amount and quality of the few boons which Providence has bestowed on the poor. The report of a meeting of the Whigs generally had an effect on his appetite; a resolution that was suspected of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... believe I ought to say—err in one or other excess with regard to their children. Love either blinds them absolutely to their defects, or makes them so terribly alive to them as to exaggerate every imperfection. It is hard to say which of the errors is most injurious in its effects. I suppose according as the temperament is desponding and diffident, or sanguine and self-sufficient, the one system or the other is likely to do ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... cruelty and torture of crucifixion much has been written and often. It would be difficult to exaggerate it. The death by the cross was a death by hunger and exhaustion in ordinary cases; it was thus torture prolonged for many hours. It is noticeable, however, that it is not the suffering but the disgrace and shame of the cross that occupied ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... dined. Yes, I do not exaggerate. It was my suggestion. One sees so much unhappiness now-a-days, and I wished to be quite sure we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... his house was every night, and had been for two years, in fact, ever since the death of Fanny, troubled by a loud knocking at the doors and in the walls. Having thus prepared the ignorant and credulous neighbours to believe or exaggerate for themselves what he had told them, he sent for a gentleman of a higher class in life, to come and witness these extraordinary occurrences. The gentleman came accordingly, and found the daughter of Parsons, to whom the spirit alone appeared, and whom alone it answered, in bed, trembling ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... McClintock did not exaggerate his ability to read faces. It was his particular hobby, and the leisure he had to apply to it had given him a remarkable appraising eye. Within ten minutes he had read much more than had greeted his ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... severely afflicted with epilepsy are, so the most skillful doctors tell us, always prone to continual and morbid self-reproach. They worry over their 'wickedness,' they are tormented by pangs of conscience, often entirely without cause; they exaggerate and often invent all sorts of faults and crimes. And here we have a man of that type who had really been driven to wrong-doing ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... this narrative of curious events and remarkable happenings, I am taking you entirely and completely into my confidence. I seek to conceal nothing, nor to exaggerate in any particular, but to present the truth as a plain matter-of-fact statement of what actually occurred. I was a unit among a hundred thousand others engaged in the practice of medicine, not more skilled than the majority, even though ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... as Vandeloup opened the box, "how you do exaggerate—ah!" he broke off his exhortation suddenly, for the box was open, and the great mass of gold was glittering ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... thousand miles above the sea-level. The eye, then, judges the horizon to be where it usually is—on the same level as the observer; but looking downwards, the eye perceives, and at once appreciates if it does not even exaggerate, the great depth at which the earth lies below the balloon. The appearance, then, as judged by the eye, is that of a mighty basin whose edge rises up all round to the level of the balloon, while its bottom lies two or three miles or ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... at all events impossible to exaggerate better than you can," answered Maria Consuelo, laughing at last at the overwhelming compliment. "Where did ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... when purity of soul inclines to pass over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt to exaggerate transgression into crime; imagination reacts upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard judge because she magnifies the seriousness of the offence. Helene seemed to think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps there was a secret in her past life, perhaps something had happened, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... sad fool in his melancholy black. The doublet sat close, making him stout and vulgar, the knee-breeches seemed to exaggerate the commonness of his thick, rather short, strutting legs. And he carried a long black rag, as a cloak, for histrionic purposes. And he had on his face a portentous grimace of melancholy and philosophic importance. His was the ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... overestimate. Where negroes make wrong estimates, in three cases out of four they will be found excessive. With whites the variation will be diminutive as often as excessive. In judging of numbers of men, a column of troops, for example, both races are liable to exaggerate, the negro generally going beyond the pale-face. Fifty mounted men may ride past a plantation. The white inhabitants will tell you a hundred soldiers have gone by, while the negroes will think there were two or ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... is no need to exaggerate. I am not saying that all men are on the same level. I know that there are great differences in the nobleness, purity, and goodness of lives, and Christianity has never been more unfairly represented than when good men have called, as they have done with St. Augustine, the virtues ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... illuminating. Mommsen speaks of the solemn enmity which Tacitus cherishes to the section of the human race "to whom everything pure is impure, and everything impure is pure." Doubtless his hatred was founded on intense national pride, but it was fed by his tendency to blacken and exaggerate. His audience was composed, as Renan says, of "aristocrats of the race of English Tories, who derived their strength from their very prejudices." Their ideas about the Jewish people were as vague as those of the ordinary man of to-day about ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity—to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... to exaggerate the piety of the dominating powers in Massachusetts during the first years of the colony's existence. It was almost a mysticism. That intimate and incommunicable experience which is sometimes called "getting religion"—the Lord knocking at the door ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... places the land-force alone at eight or nine thousand men, and Duchambon reports to the minister D'Argenson that he was attacked in all by thirteen thousand. His mortifying position was a sharp temptation to exaggerate; but his conduct can only be explained by a belief that the force of his enemy was far greater than it ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... him under a partly beaten aspect. At least, I did; not my dear aunt, who was compassionate of him, however thoroughly she condemned his ruinous extravagance, and the shifts and evasions it put him to. She feared, that instead of mending the difficulty, he had postponed merely to exaggerate it in the squire's mind; and she was now of opinion that the bringing him down to meet the squire was very bad policy, likely to result in danger to my happiness; for, if the money should not be forthcoming on the date named, all my father's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at that moment those pangs of jealousy in which a poet had tried in vain to make me believe! the jealousy of engravings, of pictures, of statues, wherein artists exaggerate human beauty, as a result of the doctrine which leads ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... to bring about a revolution. It is easy to lead a handful of men to pillage, destroy, and massacre, but to raise a whole people, or any great portion of that people, calls for the continuous or repeated action of leaders. These exaggerate the discontent; they persuade the discontented that the government is the sole cause of all the trouble, especially of the prevailing dearth, and assure men that the new system proposed by them will engender an age of felicity. These ideas germinate, propagating themselves ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... just been sentenced to be hanged. Our ideals are always thrilling until one day we wake up to find them accomplished facts; and the only real passion of our life is the woman who went off and married somebody else. I exaggerate, perhaps, but scarcely too much, I believe. For, as I said before, there is a certain "kink" in human nature which casts a halo of delight over those things which we have lost, or, by the biggest stretch of dreaming-fancy can we ever hope to possess. I suppose it means that we could ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... vice.' Punin was fond of high-sounding expressions, and had a great propensity, if not for lying, for romancing and exaggeration; he admired everything, fell into ecstasies over everything.... And I, in imitation of him, began to exaggerate and be ecstatic, too. 'What a crazy fellow you've grown! God have mercy on you!' my old nurse used to say to me. Punin's narratives used to interest me extremely; but even better than his stories I loved the readings ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... apparent stupefaction, and Newman hurried to and fro, thrusting his hands into all his pockets successively, and drawing out the linings of every one in the excess of his irresolution. It was but a moment, but the confusion crowded into that one moment no imagination can exaggerate. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... leopards." This tale at the time was likely to be exceedingly popular. Ever since the rise of Montanism—which made its appearance about the time of the death of Polycarp—there had been an increasing tendency all over the Church to exaggerate the merits of martyrdom. This tendency reached its fullest development in the early part of the third century. The letter of Ignatius to the Romans exhibits it in the height of its folly. Ignatius proclaims his most earnest desire to be torn to pieces ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... be it nowise apprehended, that any personal connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illusions of friendship; as fair mementos of bygone unions, of those nights and suppers of ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... auctioneer, "what do you say for these famous premises? I think I do not exaggerate when I use the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... see you so near to my house, Nelly. How are you at the Grange? Let us hear. The rumour goes,' he added, in a lower tone, 'that Edgar Linton is on his death-bed: perhaps they exaggerate ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... compared to an old fashioned infant, which had all the vices and deformity of a corrupt constitution and precocious passions. The exhibition of a panorama of Sydney in the metropolis of England, attracted large crowds. It was hardly possible to exaggerate the charms of its scenery, when clothed in the radiant verdure of the spring; but the dwellings were drawn, not only in their just proportions, but with all the grace of the pencil—cabins looked like bowers. The poet, Campbell, struck with the glowing harmony, exclaimed, how delightful ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... together; yet, in spite of every precaution, there would now and then come to light some plan or project that would fill the whites with alarm. They felt half the time as though walking on the crust of a volcano, and hence were in a state of mind to exaggerate every danger, and give ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... home from Sunday-school that Aladdin had enticed Margaret to the forbidden river. She was not sure that he knew how to row, for he was prone to exaggerate his prowess at this and that, and she went because of the fine defiance of it, and because Aladdin exercised an irresistible fascination. He it was who could whistle the most engagingly through his front teeth; and he it was, when sad dogs of boys of ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... "You exaggerate fearfully," she said in a faint, weary voice; "but I cannot enter into my defence—it is not worth doing. You are nothing to me in future, and the past side of the story may as well remain untold. I have lost all through you, but I have not complained. Your blunders and misfortunes may have been ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... large house to look after, as our little home at Middlemoor had been so very, very simple. Yes, I see now it must have been very hard upon her, for, instead of doing all I could to help her, I was quite taken up with my own part of it, and ready to grumble at and exaggerate every ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... provoked beyond the Atlantic by the German atrocities and by the more recent deportations, I was inclined to think, for one moment, that I had solved the problem, and that their sympathy for Belgium had brought these soldiers to the rescue. We are so easily inclined to exaggerate the part which one ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... The Professor did not exaggerate when he spoke of the widespread interest excited by his novel psychophysiological experiment. Long before the hour had arrived the room was filled by a galaxy of talent. Besides the celebrities whom he had mentioned, there had come from London the great ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meet this in part I have put a cargo of provisions at the mouth of Salt River, guarded by two regiments. All these detachments weaken the main force, and endanger the whole. Do not conclude, as before, that I exaggerate the facts. They are as stated, and the future looks as dark as possible. It would be better if some man of sanguine mind were here, for I am forced to order according ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... experience was singularly adapted to develop and exaggerate his natural characteristics, self-reliance, self-control, stern determination, and, it must be added, the exacting harshness which demanded of others all that he had himself accepted. His experience of suffering and deprivation served, not to enlarge his indulgence, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... tell you why you started it. It wasn't silliness on your part to exaggerate this little trifle of love-making into something serious. I was poaching on your preserves, and you wanted to get rid of me. It was all very nice and snug here, you and the girl, until I came along. And now you're jealous—that's it, ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... time the present writer was in St. Andrews as Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology. To say that an enthusiasm for totems and taboos, ghosts and gods of savage men, was aroused by these lectures, would be to exaggerate unpardonably. Efforts to make the students write essays or ask questions were so entire a failure that only one question was received—as to the proper pronunciation of 'Myth.' Had one been fortunate enough to interest Murray, it must have led to some discussion of his ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... I think the generality commit, refers to this same 'ambition' itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man who lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about producing himself, pruriently anxious ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... has a beautiful nature," Henrietta went on. "I've studied him for many years and I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good prospectus. He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the other hand he doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... result will be, that, if you possess a conscience, it will not only cease to suffer as it now suffers when it gazes upon the toil of others, the significance of which we, through ignorance, either always exaggerate or depreciate, but you will constantly experience a glad consciousness that, with every day, you are doing more and more to satisfy the demands of your conscience, and you will escape from that ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... number below two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and color,—besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, Sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... your conduct. I was anxious to benefit by an opportunity so seldom afforded us. I laboured not to omit the slightest shade, or the most petty line in your portrait. Here there was no other task incumbent on me but to copy; there was no need to exaggerate or overlook, in order to produce a more unexceptionable pattern. Here was a combination of harmonies and graces, incapable of diminution or accession without injury ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... head was absurdly small for so huge an animal, and the stiff thick tail projected backward but was not long enough to reach the ground. The hind limbs are very long and straight, the fore limbs relatively short, and the short high arched back and extremely deep and compressed body served to exaggerate the height and prominence of the great plates. The surface of these plates, covered with a network of blood-vessels, shows that they bore a covering of thick horny skin during life, which probably projected as a ridge beyond their edges and still further increased their size. The ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... to suppose that she blamed him for the unhappiness he had caused. She quite freed him from all intention of wrong. And after all, it might not be so bad. A mother's anxiety might exaggerate the danger; she would try and hope for the best. Change of scene must be tried; in the meantime, her fear was, that pique, or wounded pride, or disappointed affection might induce the unhappy child to—in short Mr Elliott must understand—. And Mrs Grove glanced expressively ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... left off, my head, in a moment more, began to swim. A horrid fear overpowered me that I might not be in my right mind, after I had read the first three sentences. Here they are, to answer for me that I exaggerate nothing:— ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... and 150, adapted from Corda, exaggerate the hypothallus, but otherwise leave nothing to ...
— The North American Slime-Moulds • Thomas H. (Thomas Huston) MacBride
... conduct is our consideration. I want you only to understand that a single false move on either side—" He took a deep pull at his cigar there, and made a purposed pause for effect. "I think, ladies and gentlemen, you will agree with me that I do not exaggerate. Swerve an inch to right or left," he added, "and you lose ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... my dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune, great as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical conformation,—it was but the crisis, the development, of a long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, the reasoning faculty obstinately ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... once succeeded. Mr. Smith's two eldest daughters, Jean and Janet, fervent in piety, unwearied in kind deeds, were well qualified both to appreciate and to attract the stepmother; and her son, on the other hand, seems to have found immediate favour in the eyes of Mr. Smith. It is, perhaps, easy to exaggerate the ready-made resemblances; the tired woman must have done much to fashion girls who were under ten; the man, lusty and opinionated, must have stamped a strong impression on the boy of fifteen. But the cleavage of the family was too marked, the ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... are putting it a trifle too strong, Hester. I have come in contact with a great many people, but I remember but one who made me think of someone else. You exaggerate, Hester." ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... King; but you exaggerate surely. Surely a certain measure of family pride is justifiable; it ought to nerve a man to be worthy of those who have gone before him. Nor have I ever thought that your feeling about your name being a heritage that you had to guard jealously ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... championship of her husband and his son were what Albinia chiefly wished to recollect; but it was impossible to free herself from a sense of pain and injury in the knowledge that she lived with a spy who would exaggerate and colour every ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot think, without a gasp of professional awe, of that fateful moment. Perhaps personal experience, at a time of life when responsibility had a special freshness and importance, has induced me to exaggerate to myself the danger of the weather. The great Admiral and good seaman could read aright the signs of sea and sky, as his order to prepare to anchor at the end of the day sufficiently proves; but, all the same, ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... I exaggerate my own defects. The reader must not take my own word for it, nor believe me altogether changed from the young man who once hoped strenuously, and struggled not so much amiss. Frostier heads than mine have gained honor ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wandered insensibly into other topics. It is impossible to exaggerate the pleasure I took to be thus sitting at the same table with Flora, in the clothes of a gentleman, at liberty and in the full possession of my spirits and resources; of all of which I had need, because it was ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... proud of the title. If any impostor had arisen to claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to deprive him of his rights. A disposition began to be perceived in him to exaggerate the number of years he had been there; it was generally understood that you must deduct a few from his account; he was vain, the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Cranch, and Mrs. Garfit could see Mrs. Flanders in the orchard because the orchard was a piece of Dods Hill enclosed; and Dods Hill dominated the village. No words can exaggerate the importance of Dods Hill. It was the earth; the world against the sky; the horizon of how many glances can best be computed by those who have lived all their lives in the same village, only leaving it once to fight in the Crimea, like old George Garfit, leaning over his garden gate smoking his ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Maurice ... and you exaggerate things, too. What if every one took himself so seriously?—and talked of failure because on a single occasion ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Soudan triumphant barbarism had produced an appalling state of things. It is impossible to exaggerate the hideousness of the regime of Mahdism. A ferocious tyranny terrorised and reduced to desolation the whole of the upper basin of the Nile; and the population is said to have shrunk from 12,000,000 to 2,000,000, although exact figures are of course ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... of the sea as light as day. Our boatman informed us, after we were well under way, that we were approaching the place called "The Garden of the Sea Gods," one of the most beautiful submarine views on the coast. He did not exaggerate, as we were soon to know, for the scene was truly wonderful, and rightly named. All kinds of sea life began to pass before our eyes, like the fast changing figures of a kaleidoscope. Here the delicate ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... ago, this time of which I write, and it may very well be that I exaggerate its raptures, as they say—though in this I do not agree—is the way with elders when they recall the sweet, honey-tinted, honey-tasting days of their youth. It would not be possible for any man to overpraise the glories ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... acquaintance tended in any way to exaggerate my ideas of human purity. Though it extended through several years, no guilty act I ever heard of detracted from his deserved reputation for beastliness. My surmises never ventured to the hazardous period of infancy, or risked the doubtful thought that kith or kin could ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... officers with General Wurmser. From generals to subalterns the universal language is 'qu'il faut faire la paix, car nous ne savons pas faire la guerre.'" Aug. 18.—"Not only the commander-in-chief, but the greatest number of the generals are objects of contempt and ridicule." Aug. 27.—"I do not exaggerate when I say that I have met with instances of down-right dotage." "It was in general orders that wine should be distributed to the men previous to the attack of the 29th. There was some difficulty in getting it up to Monte Baldo. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... and I wished to remind you that this is not a rostrum. You auctioneers are licenced gentlemen, and you do exaggerate a little sometimes. Are you not ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Pennant, or any of the many scrap-book histories which have been recently fabricated from those old materials; but when we come to examine them, we find that in these cases, as everywhere else, Mr. Macaulay's propensity to caricature and exaggerate leads him not merely to disfigure circumstances, but totally to forget the principle on which such episodes are admissible into regular history—namely, the illustration of the story. They should be, as it were, woven into the narrative, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... they didn't go to the polls at all,' Walter replied. He knew that this was exaggeration, but it pleased him to exaggerate. He enjoyed the effect on the honourable member's ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... writer hesitated. "I do not think I exaggerate, madame, when I say that I alone in Paris know his history. He ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield |
